We live busy lives and often it seems difficult to take time out, catch our breath, and maybe just reassess whether what we’re chasing is worth our time and worry.
In a frenetic world, we probably all have a favorite way of finding sanctuary–perhaps taking time off, or traveling to some idyllic spot, or just off to a meal out or a movie with sweetheart or family, or maybe indulging in a hobby or interest. Me, I like gardening.
I know one thing–we all need time-out, moments when we can drench ourselves in silence and apartness, returning renewed and, just maybe, wiser–the gift of self-reflection when we glimpse where we’ve been, and are, and where we need to go.
Cultivating quietness long term means we have to work at it, just like other good things in life. They say practice makes perfect. I don’t know about that, but I do know it makes things better.
Some find meditation important in gaining equilibrium, and I can endorse that, particularly the Zen kind with its focus on mindfulness that affords me access into myself without my need to control.
Lately, I’ve added poetry to ways I can augment my need to exit life’s speedway. I bathe in its wisdom, marvel at its concision, the depths of psyche it plums, its mellifluous stream of words, the cornucopia of tumbling imagery that makes me see again things I’ve missed or erringly tossed or lost in my life’s journey.
We busy ourselves in a world often filled with self-centeredness and aggressiveness that, if we’re not careful, can dull our humanity and turn our hearts to stone. Poetry helps us keep the wolves at bay–the world’s and our own–and with our best self, love and hope again.
Poetry does it all so well.
As poet Joseph Roux marvelously puts it, “Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.”
It’s sufficiently dismaying that the Supreme Court via its Hobby Lobby decision has further defined corporate entities as people, and thus with inherent individual rights.
Not only do corporations have unlimited spending rights when it comes to elections, but with the Hobby Lobby ruling, for-profit corporations can now refuse to observe government mandates under the ACA to provide birth control coverage in health coverage for their employees on religious grounds. (Religious non-profits were previously exempted under the law.)
Intriguingly, the majority decision that denigrates a woman’s sovereignty over her own body was made by five men, all of them Catholics.
We can only speculate the slippery slope the Court may have set in motion. In fact, it suggests that for-profit corporations with moral or religious scruples are now free to discriminate in hiring gays or even divorced people. They might even opt to dismiss those opting for abortion or living with a significant other, or terminating their marriage.
At the very least, the Court’s decision establishes a precedent for the expansion of exclusion rights, and not just with regard to corporations, since the underlying assumption is based upon the notion of a person’s right to his or her convictions and corporations are now people.
Historically, following upon a corporate scandal, Congress in 1907 passed a measure forbidding corporate investment in federal elections, which held until 1978 when the high court ruled that corporations have First Amendment rights to finance state ballot initiatives. Even then, only individuals or groups of individuals–political action committees–could do so.
Then came the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in 2010, granting corporations unlimited spending rights in all elections, federal, state or local.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court had never in any similar case ruled a for-profit corporation to be a religious entity for purpose of exclusion from federal law. The Justice Department, in fact, contended it would be unable to effectively enforce other laws affecting child labor, immunization, serving racial minorities, or income tax laws requiring universal compliance regardless of how government spends the money.
It’s bad enough as is that in the non-corporate sector, even though Title IX bars schools that receive federal funds (e.g, public student loans and Pell grants) from discriminating against transgender and gays, there exists a specific exemption for religious colleges who find such mandates incompatible with their religious beliefs.
Consequently, the Department of Education has recently granted exemptions to George Fox University, Simpson University, and Spring Arbor University. Since there are a good number of evangelical colleges that fall under the religious umbrella, it’s likely there will be many more exemptions.
Unfortunately, the dark side of religion is often one of imposing beliefs on others, and its history continues stained with violence and intolerance.
We know that majorities can constitute their own tyranny, but so can minorities. Hence Congress needs to review the laws governing these exemptions and narrow their scope.
We should all be concerned about Thursday’s 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd District that the FDA needn’t consider the banning of antibiotics in healthy food producing animals.
Given the growing menace of antibiotic resistant infections among humans and the inveterate use of antibiotics in the meat industry to promote weight gain or combat disease, we draw closer to a pandemic in which even a minor wound or infection could prove deadly.
As is, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informs us that at least two million Americans are sickened with anti-resistant pathogens annually
I may have been one of them, having just recently recovered from an extended bout with a staph infection that ultimately required daily IV.
I naively had told my infectious disease physician that I didn’t really want to leave the hospital until I was over the infection. His rejoinder was that a hospital wasn’t the safest place to be, given the infection rate incurred among patients (one out of three).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comments that “much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe.”
More than 70% of all antibiotics are administered to animals, even when healthy.
To be fair, I can’t say what all the factors were in the court’s split decision, except that it imperils all of us.
I do know that according to the World Health Organization (April 2014), antimicrobial bacteria resistance increasingly threatens public health worldwide, “a problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine. A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century.”
Consider that Carbapenem antibiotics used as a fallback in treating life-threatening infections from a common intestinal bacterium are now ineffective for nearly half of those treated in some countries. This bacterium is a major source of hospital acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections and infections among newborns and intensive care patients.
Likewise, our best antibiotics for treating urinary tract infections caused by E. coli are now ineffective in more than half the cases.
Ten countries are now reporting that their last resort antibiotic for gonorrhea no longer works.
Unfortunately, while the FDA did ask pharmaceuticals, animal producers and vets to exercise restraint in employing antibiotics that are also used for humans, the FDA appealed an earlier court ruling banning penicillin and two kinds of tetracyclides promoting growth, unless users can provide evidence it won’t produce drug resistant microbes. Thus, the Court’s decision in favor of the FDA’s appeal.
Overseas, the EU has banned the use of antibiotics in animal feed (2006) and now South Korea has done the same. In China, however, the use of antibiotics in animal production is widespread.
That animal and human health are linked was decisively demonstrated in outbreaks of multi resistant Salmonella in 2011, 2012 and 2013, traced back to ground beef and poultry sources (National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System).
As physician David Angus admonishes in his best selling The End of Illness (2011),
Wealthy countries take for granted the triumph of science over bacteria, but increasingly doctors are battling infections that can only be quelled by the most powerful antibiotics known to medicine–or, at worst, by none of them at all. In the United States alone, antibiotic-resistant infections cause roughly 100,000 deaths a year. Imagine a world in which antibiotics produce toxic effects and unpredictable outcomes instead of the guaranteed cures we have come to expect–and you can understand what keeps epidemiologists awake at night (298-99).
The other day, I had a solicitation in the mail from a magazine called Reminiscence. Apparently, a lot of folks like to engage in nostalgia. I confess I occasionally do the same, though I’m aware of how time can soften the contours of the past.
Lit Brothers
Still, I like to muse on past events that were really quite wonderful and that I wish I could relive again. After all, why are we given memory if we’re simply meant to forget? If I had to pick a year in which to indulge, it would be 1949. It was a good year for me and for America, too.
Collectively, it was a simpler time, relatively free from the frenetic pace, complexity and stress of today.
To be sure, segregation was still a factor in denying Blacks their portion of the American dream and women were still largely subservient to men. China had just fallen to the Communists. At the Kremlin, Stalin ruled with an iron fist and Russia had just tested the A-bomb. The Cold War was on in earnest and so we resorted to an ongoing airlift to save Berlin.
Nonetheless, we had a decisive president in Harry S. Truman, who never skirted making the hard choices like dropping the A-bomb to shorten a savage war or later dismissing a popular, but unruly general. In short, we felt safe.
Four years after World War II, we were at peace, with no protracted conflicts like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. We weren’t saddled with mind-boggling national debt, Congressional deadlock, inflationary pressures, the loss of our manufacturing base, or economic recession.
There weren’t any urban riots, decaying cities, or the threat of climate change that imperils our existence. We could never have imagined a 9/11 or the pervasiveness of terrorism.
Here are a few economic facts that put things into perspective about 1949:
Unemployment stood at just 3.8%.
Inflation, a mind-boggling 0.95%.
You could buy a house for an average $7500.
A car for $1400.
Gas, 17 cents for regular.
Let’s put it another way: $100 in 1949 now comes to $967.01 in 2014, with an average 3.5 inflation rate annually since that remarkable year (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Most items were still made here in America, including TVs and cars. Cars had turned into long finned gargantuans replete with white wall tires and, with pent up demand, we couldn’t make them fast enough.
We were kings in forging steel and cities like Akron, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Bethlehem and Lehigh lit up the night sky.
In New England, the textile mills of Lawrence, Lowell and North Adams hummed on.
We were good at making shoes and my father toiled in a neighborhood leather factory.
I was then a street urchin, much like Tom Sawyer, exploring the thoroughfares of Philadelphia, curious and, sometimes, mischievous. Occasionally, I played hooky, skipping school to walk downtown and visually rummage the big, many floor stores like Gimbels, Lit Brothers and Wanamaker’s, bustling with goods and replete with escalator stairs.
Yes, American cities once possessed vibrant downtowns that provided cohesion before the onset of suburban box stores and strip malls. Downtown was the place to be–shopping, movies, eateries.
Baseball was truly our national game, with many of the contests played in the afternoons. It was the era of greats like Williams, DiMaggio, and Musial. They hadn’t lowered the mound to boost hitters. No free agency meant modest salaries. Stadiums were named for people, not corporations or banks. Franchises didn’t move. Players didn’t cheat with drugs. Sundays and holidays meant doubleheaders. What a deal!
We didn’t have playgrounds in Kensington, the ethnic blue collar stronghold, dubbed Fishtown, where I lived near the Delaware River, but that didn’t stop us from playing stick ball, smashing cut-in-half tennis balls against factory facades. You determined singles, doubles, triples and home runs by window level.
I liked venturing down to the wharves, where I could see the cargo ships unloading, waive to their crews, and study their flags to learn their origin. It was here I developed my addiction to visit far off lands.
TVs initially with 4 inch screens, were now selling madly, or at the rate of 100,000 weekly, sadly hinting at foreclosure of neighborhood enclaves where we’d gather nightly on the white marble steps of our row housing, chatting our humanity until late evening breezes whispered their coolness and launched our escape from the steamy heat of asphalt streets and we could at last renew ourselves with sleep. We never dreamed of air conditioning, though a good many of us lived in upstair flats.
Despite TV’s inroads, radio still loomed large with shows like The Shadow, Jack Benny, Suspense and the Lone Ranger. Daytime–Arthur Godfrey was all the rage.
As for TV, showslike Mama, Texaco Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Life of Riley were our staples. At most, you’d be lucky to have three channels, and after the 11 pm news, stations would shut down, sometimes to the National Anthem. They gave you a test pattern to help you get your “rabbit-ear” antennas right.
The music revolution hadn’t begun. No Elvis Presley. No Beatles. No Rock n’ Roll. No heavy metal or hip hop. We had Dick Clark and American Bandstand. Not knowing anything else, we were content.
Lyrics still rhymed, making them easy to remember. No CDs. Just vinyl records that could scratch easily, but the risk worth the sound!
Sinatra and Crosby reigned along with new stars like Rosemary Clooney, Frankie Laine, the Ames Brothers, and Dinah Shore. And then there was the handsome Mario Lanza, whose baritone thunder captured women’s hearts.
In 1949, you could escape Philly’s summer heat with a day movie for only a dime or a quarter at night, and even get in on a double header that included the world news and Disney cartoons. Bogart, Gable, Wayne, Cooper, Grant–and, yes,–Bob Hope (number one) were the big draws. On Saturday afternoons, a special treat with serial showings of Superman!
Despite technicolor and Gone with the Wind, color was rare.
Comedy was big and I laughed till my sides hurt at the likes of the three stooges, and Abbott and Costello. And then there were those shoot ’em up Westerns with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, adept in singing prowess as well as gun savvy. Why we even got to know their horses, Trigger and Champion, unlike the plods of other Westerns apart from the Lone Ranger’s Silver.
Telephones weren’t in abundance, so sometimes we resorted to a neighbor’s phone or a telephone booth to make a call. To call long distance could be expensive, even intimidating, and thus rare. Nice, however to be out of reach. Or on the streets, free of distracted drivers.
Magazines, often pictorial, like Look, Life, and Saturday Evening Post, caught your eye and provided quick reads. And they cost cents, not dollars.
Yes, many doctors still made house calls and health costs were reasonable.
We didn’t have Interstates then. That would come with Eisenhower’s mandate. Main highways were mostly two lanes giving way occasionally to a third lane for passing. Crossing the Ben Franklin for the Jersey shore and fresh fruit took you through spacious countryside with luxuriant tomato farms. Mom and Pop cabins–no motel chains–offered accommodation for $3 a night.
There were only 150 million of us then and even California had ample elbow room. Worldwide, just under 2 billion people, meaning more manageable resources, less poverty, and a cleaner environment.
More of us began to fly–on noisy propeller contraptions that is. Passenger ships still plied the ocean like their ancient predecessors.
What I really liked were the trains and, especially, the sleek new diesel locomotives. Train stations were busy, exciting places, filled with shops, much the way it still is in Europe.
On a sadder note, I miss my once teeming family–my mother and father, brother, oodles of cousins, dear aunts and uncles, and childhood friends, in 1949, luxuriating in life’s bloom. As life stretches out, we mourn our losses as well as count our gains. We learn to appreciate what we cannot keep. I am glad for memory.
I could go on, but you get the picture, or at least my view of 1949–like a fine wine, a year of superbly good vintage. A time of innocence and simplicity, where less proved more, and thus possessed its own indulgent beauty.
But we can’t be Rip Van Winkles either. Time moves on, and we with it.
This song, though in another language, compels me to listen, and even when I don’t try to, it whirls through my head, refusing to go away. And I prefer it this way.
I’m writing of Pablo Aldorán’s Solamente Tú.
Alborán, just recently turned 25, writes much of his own music and was a Latin Grammy Award nominee in 2012 for his debut album by the same name, released in 2011.
Spanish, like all Romance languages, resonates with sensory beauty when put to music. All you need is to listen to get hooked. It’s also a fun way to learn Spanish. Alborán’s passionate intensity adds still more.
But sometimes you don’t need to understand another language. As is often the case with poetry, its kin, you need only to allow yourself to feel.
I wasn’t surprised, then, to find through translation that Solamente Tú is, indeed, poetry in its own right. Here are the words, rich in the metaphors of love, in both Spanish and English. You can access the song directly at youtube, but I like the album recording best.
Solamente Tú
Regálame tu risa,
enseñame a soñar
con solo una caricia
me pierdo en este mar
Regálame tu estrella,
la que ilumina esta noche
llena de paz y de armonía,
y te entregaré mi vida
Haces que mi cielo
vuelva a tener ese azul,
pintas de colores
mis mañanas solo tú
navego entre las olas de tu voz
y tú, y tú, y tú, y solamente tú
haces que mi alma se despierte con tu luz
y tú, y tú, y tú..
Enseña tus heridas y así la curará
que sepa el mundo entero
que tu voz guarda un secreto
no menciones tu nombre que en el firmamento
se mueren de celos
tus ojos son destellos
tu garganta es un misterio
Haces que mi cielo
vuelva a tener ese azul,
pintas de colores
mis mañanas solo tú
navego entre las olas de tu voz
y tú, y tú, y tú, y solamente tú
haces que mi alma se despierte con tu luz
y tú, y tú, y tú, y solamente tú
haces que mi alma se despierte con tu luz
y tú, y tú, y tú..
No menciones tu nombre que en el firmamento
se mueren de celos
tus ojos son destellos
tu garganta es un misterio
Hace que mi cielo
vuelva a tener ese azul,
tintas de colores
mi mañana solo tú
navego entre la sola de tu voz
y tú, y tú, y tú, y solamente tú
hace que mi alma se despierte con tu luz
y tú, y tú, y tú..
Only You
Give me your laughter as a gift,
Teach me to dream
With just a caress
I lose myself in this sea
Give me your star,
the one that lights up this night
full of peace and harmony,
and I will hand my life to you.
You make my sky
Have that blue again,
Spots of colors,
My mornings only you.
I sail among the waves of your voice,
and you, and you, and you, and only you
make my soul awaken with your light
and you, and you, and you…
Show your wounds and so it will heal them
That the whole world knows
That your voice keeps a secret.
Don’t mention your name, for in the heavens
they die of jealousy
Your eyes are sparkles
Your throat is a mystery.
You make my sky
Have that blue again,
spots of colors,
my mornings only you.
I sail among the waves of your voice
and you, and you, and you, and only you
make my soul wake up with your light
and you, and you, and you, and only you
make my soul wake up with your light
and you, and you, and you…
Don’t mention your name for in the heavens
they die of jealousy
Your eyes are sparkles
Your throat is a mystery.
You make my sky
have that blue again,
spots of colors,
my mornings only you.
I sail among the waves of your voice
and you, and you, and you, and only you
make my soul wake up with your light
and you, and you, and you…
I just read Frank Somerville’s recent post (July 3) on Facebook. For the record, he’s the nightly news anchor on KTVU in Oakland, CA. I don’t live anywhere near the West Coast, so I don’t get to watch him, but Somerville keeps a page on Facebook that I read daily for its keen insights, sensitivity, and passion for social justice. Thank goodness he’s out there and how I wish there were more people like him, concerned about doing the right thing.
I say this because, quite frankly, I’m damned tired of running into people on a daily basis who, just the opposite, are full of themselves in their thoughtlessness towards others, and making matters worse, frequently mean and calculatingly offensive. Unfortunately, the downside of technology can be the marginalization of community, despite a plethora of social media.
Somerville laments how many people use the Internet to get back at others. Case in point, a waitress posting the $69 dining bill of former Oakland Raider Warren Sapp, who hadn’t left her a tip. Clearly, she sought to embarrass and humiliate Sapp, who later said that he didn’t like the service and her calling him and his friends boys. I know that I’ve done the same thing as Sapp on rare occasions. Tipping is a way of saying thank you and, likewise, an incentive to serve the public well. In Europe, you don’t generally tip, since a service charge is included, and, believe me, the service can get pretty lousy.
Meanness, unfortunately, runs amuck on the Internet due to the anonymity it provides for angry types low on self-image seeking compensation. I remember Edgar Allen Poe writing in his goose-bumpy short story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” of that most perfect kind of vengeance that allows its perpetrator impunity, or escape from accountability.
I often see Poe’s maxim raise its ugly head in reader comments, especially in discussion forums, and of course, par excellence, Twitter and Facebook. I find myself aghast, not only at the repugnant foreclosure of other viewpoints, but the sheer cowardice it masks, latent with resentment and a need to enhance self by controlling others or turning them into punching bags. Sadly, there have been instances where such verbal pugilism has taken on fatal consequences.
More often, I see the pervasive fallout of anonymity virtually daily when, like Somerville (more below), I’m driving, motorists who think rules are for other people–deliberately running traffic lights, stop signs, or not yielding right of way, or pulling out in front of you, or not signaling, or slowing traffic to a snail’s pace while on their cell phone or texting in public mastabatory self-indulgence.
My wife came home the other day, telling me of a woman who turned in front of her at a three way stop. She gave her the horn, getting the one finger salute in return. I’ve counseled her to not let such ilk spoil her day. You also just don’t know who you’re up against. Stats tell us an estimated 1500 die in road rage incidents every year. Anyway, I sometimes think there really is a bit of karma going around and that the chickens ultimately come home to roost.
Somerville ends his blog with his account of a guy with a mounted camera on his dash who comes up behind him “for no apparent reason” as he is on his way to work. Turns out, he can’t get rid of him. Pulling over, the guy draws along side of him, and Somerville, not wanting the incident to escalate, calmly asks, “What are you doing?, only to have the guy grin and keep videotaping him. Speeding off, Somerville finally loses him.
Hey, so creepy! You just never know what kind of oddball that anonymity may confront you with next.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel (Maya Angelou).
I like to read and I read omnivorously, whether fiction or non-fiction. I marvel at the talent and effort that lies behind all good writing, the courage of writers to pursue their craft, given the minuscule few who get published, or receive pecuniary recompense, or the public’s accolades.
I marvel at their discipline in fending off that great tempter, procrastination, for writing well doesn’t come easily and what’s tedious we most always avoid.
And then there is the ephemerality of all success that mocks their efforts, that no matter how well crafted, compelling, or discerning, that best part of a writer’s self, succumbs, inevitably, to a world busy with its own pursuits, forgotten, no longer in print, to be given away, or tossed out.
I was reminded of this when I downloaded a Gutenberg ebook freebie from more than fifty years ago with its reading recommendations of many authors I’d never heard of, though I have graduate degrees in English and taught for forty years at the college level. The list of recommended classics in our schools today is, likewise, considerably different from those I pursued, studied and taught across the years. Taste changes, fame fades, and life moves on.
Writers, nonetheless, pursue their craft against all odds and sucking sweets elsewhere for varied reasons, foremost to find acceptance and, in that best of all possible worlds, the convergence, like two mighty streams, of avocation and vocation.
Whatever, successful fiction writers must be good at seduction, alluring us with suspense, well-crafted plot embedded with conflict, intriguing characters, good dialog, an accessible style; nonfiction writers must also prove themselves good at seduction, appealing to reader interests, their quest for information and know-how, their need to feel smart. Writing is all about closing the deal. Giving readers what they want.
As readers, we like cosying up. We like being wooed.
“No society treats its women as well as its men.”
UN Development Programme, 1997)
There’s a new movie I’m wanting to see. It’s called Maleficent and stars Angelina Jolie.
It’s timely because it’s really about rape, which has now entered into virtually every fabric of American life, including our schools. On our higher college campuses, one out of five coeds will be raped.
Time Magazine in its recent cover issue on the subject, mentions that the University of Montana (Missoula) has averaged 80 rapes annually over the last two years. It isn’t unique: even the Ivy League schools have a high incident rate–that is, of reported rapes, twenty percent of them related to alcohol. Some experts speculate that most campus rape goes unreported.
Across the nation, the same 20% figure prevails, with 80% of rape victims below age 25, according to The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, done in 2010, and made public last year. Stalking, now abetted by smart technology, is even more widespread, or five times the number of rapes.
But let’s get down to bedrock: The survey estimated that 1.27 million American women were raped–or one woman every 29 seconds–and 5.1 million stalked–a fall out rate of one woman every 7 seconds.
Rape is so much a part of our national fabric that it’s found its way into a Walt Disney film in a grim version of Sleeping Beauty. In the eponymous film, Maleficent is a fairy initially enjoying unlimited aerial freedom in a forest setting (i.e, archetypal rendering of situational danger), who falls in love with Stefan, a human being, who betrays her.
Rape, in the film’s metaphorical version, is transposed into Stefan’s drugging Maleficent so that he can take her wings back to the king of humans. In this age of ambien, pervasive alcohol, and PT141 on the horizon, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
In a cogent review, http://huff.to/1lbymvh, Hayley Krischer writes that “Maleficent is a commentary on current male and female relationships. It’s a commentary on rape culture. And much more, it’s a story that allows a woman to recover. It gives her agency. It gives her power. It allows her to reclaim the story. And this is something that can’t be ignored.”
Sadly, clipping a woman’s wings is what many men do, with rape its ultimate manifestation, taking away their ability to be fully themselves, free to pursue their dreams, able to soar above the nets of male malice, discrimination, exploitation and often betrayal. (Krischer reminds us that 70% percent of rapes are committed by someone the woman knows.)
While many gains have been made with the rise of feminism in the 1960s, the rape culture is still with us, and even more, of men who still try to clip a women’s wings through unequal pay, feminization of poverty, career barriers, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and physical violence.
In a culture still dominated by testosterone driven men I doubt this sad scenario will ever fully vanish, but at least a film like Maleficent can give women awareness and its articulation, empowering them to keep their wings intact.
I have always liked the poetry of Christina Rossetti, Victorian England’s foremost female poet. Poetry ran in her genes. Her maternal grandfather had been a poet and translator; and, of course, so was her more famous brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who also excelled at art.
I like to think of her in conjunction with the American poet, Emily Dickinson, our most prominent woman poet; in fact, they share the same birth year, (1830). Both suffered losses in love and never married.
Both were raised in devoutly religious homes. Dickinson’s grandfather was prominent in founding Amherst College, initially a school to train ministers. Rossetti’s mother was an evangelical. Both wrote a cerebral poetry of ardent sensitivity to life around them.
But there are differences, too. Religiously, Dickinson proved rebellious; at times, even skeptical.
On the other hand, Rossetti’s poetry is replete in piety. Still, thematically both poets seem often preoccupied with retreat and mortality. Strikingly, several of their poems feature a persona speaking from the grave.
Here is a poem I’ve always liked and taught in my literature classes for many years. Maybe you will like it too:
After Death
The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where thro’ the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say:
“Poor child, poor child”: and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
He did not love me living but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm tho’ I am cold.
ANALYSIS
In this poem, a deceased person reminisces her funeral. She recalls the man she loved, filled with pity, gazing at her corpse and weeping.
But there is disillusionment on the persona’s part: her friend did “not touch the shroud, or raise the fold/That hid my face, or take my hand in his,/or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.” In short, he exhibited no commitment, even in the context of death. (It’s not what he does, but what he omits to do that matters here.) At best, his response proves ambiguous and we are left unsure his grief manifests love, for grief is not necessarily synonymous with love. We only know from the persona’s perspective that he “did not love me living.”
Ironically, the persona’s anguish eclipses that of the mourner, for what she yearned for in life was love and not the pity that comes from her death.
The poem’s last lines are saved from self-pity in their matter-of-factness: “He pitied me; and very sweet it is/To know he still is warm though I am cold.”
But the poem with its subtle “I am cold” also returns us to the theme of death and its inexorable alienation from life with which the poem opens. And even more: it hints at the persona’s repressed anguish in the close–“He still is warm though I am cold,” sparing these lines from their seeming sardonic, or derisive, tone. The truth she reaches for is that he did not make use of the opportunity to love her while she lived.
While pity may speak for the mourner’s potentiality for love, death has foreclosed on its possibility.
Mortality’s unction is that we fervently love while we can in this brief parenthesis of light.
To be happy in life comes down to feeling good about yourself. It isn’t about money, popularity, power, or other commonly assumed indicators of success. In fact, these may actually be forms of over compensation, masking our sense of unworthiness or inferiority.
Unfortunately, most of us think we have to earn our self respect by proving ourselves worthy in ways others will approve. Consequently, we allow others to become monitors of ourselves and miss living authentic lives. We are what we think about ourselves.
Where does it all begin, this failing to accept ourselves? Clearly, much of it comes from our childhood experiences, or the voices of the past, as these lay the foundation for self-esteem and the confidence it fosters–our ability to view others as friends, not rivals; colleagues, not conspirators; ourselves as lovable, attractive, and admired; not difficult to like, be around, or embarrassing.
Surprisingly, these voices often find their sources in the “friendly fire” of parents, teachers, siblings, and even playmates, who label us as unworthy through physical abuse, verbal assault, neglect, abandonment, and the social apartheid of cliques.
As a consequence, it’s been estimated that nearly 50% of us suffer from anxiety in its myriad forms–worry, panic, dread, phobias and defensive rituals. Unsure of ourselves, we relive our childhood trauma whenever we encounter people or circumstances echoing the voices of our past, or what we’ve assumed to be true about ourselves. The past colors our perceptions, often resulting in a paranoia that we aren’t liked, are being talked about, even plotted against.
Ironically, our negative attitude may turn our suspicions into reality, driving away the very people whose friendship can reassure us that we have worth. We can’t chance our being rejected yet again.
I’m struck with how many of those who get caught up in violence, frequently mass shootings, are unable to handle perceived rejection and, accordingly, act out. The recent killings of six young people in Santa Barbara by Elliot Rodger, age 22, can be added to a lengthy list. The focus of his anger shows the pattern–he aimed to get even with the women who had rejected him and the men they chose instead.
I’m aware that it can be argued that a good deal of such violent outbursts stems from mental illness. What normal person could possibly do such things? The fact is, they do, and what constitutes mental illness is often shrouded in legal ambiguity with court appointed experts often unable to agree. The vast majority of those with mental illness do not commit such acts anyway, and every day people we often live or work with often do.
Unfortunately, a good many of us are passive-aggressive, hiding our inner turbulence, only to have it spring like a panther into the open, suddenly, surprisingly, and vehemently. “But he seemed so quiet, always said hello, and sometimes offered help.”
By the way, you can find a good deal of what I call “angst poetry” online. Take this poem, for example. Appropriately, it’s titled “Rejection.”
What are we so afraid of?
Afraid of wanting, but not being wanted
Afraid of feeling, but not being felt
Afraid of asking and being denied
We all need love–and some of us, because of our childhood ghosts, require it even more.
We live busy lives and often it seems difficult to take time out, catch our breath, and maybe just reassess whether what we’re chasing is worth our time and worry.
Brimmings: up from the well 